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Social CRM – do we know what it is? Can it help Small or Medium Companies?As many of you will know, we often think about Social CRM and the changes that the new Social Media are bringing into the world of business. However, most of the things we talk about here are very US-centric, and very focussed on big, global companies. So we decided to come back to the real world and discuss where we can see a benefit for small and medium businesses in Europe and the rest of the world.So what do we mean by Social CRM – this is the 6 million dollar question, but let us give a simple definition – Social CRM means the new CRM processes that involve engaging with customers, making them a more central focus, collaborating with them to fix problems and build relationships. The company is listening more to the customer, the customer is setting the rules and the dynamic of the relationship. But the underlying process is still CRM. Specifically, customers are fans, followers, prospects, customers and advocates (in that order perhaps) for you.

Social CRM will mean different things for different companies, but if earlier slide gives an overview of the grand strategy, what can it mean for an SMB who is, after all, just focussing on the bottom line.Customers want and expect companies to be present on social media sites like Facebook. They have become part of the fabric of business. So can an SMB legitimately afford to spend some time and money to have a presence there – to promote discussion and PR about their brand? Of course, provided they work to keep the project small and keep working at it. This can provide a valuable understanding of the customers and what they think of you. Even for an SMB, creating a Facebook Page or Group can give them access to insight.Customers want to be able to network and pass information using tools they are familiar with. The rise of Facebook as the “de facto” standard way of “Liking” something or mentioning it on our profile is very simple and yet all-pervasive. Companies can quickly implement something on their existing web site to allow this to happen (Facebook offers point and click integration tools) . All of the above offer Sales and Marketing insights to SMBs about their customer behavior. It is not just sitting in front of a computer to see when someone says something about your company, it is about having a system or software that, as a tool, allows you to see the important messages at the right time. And taking another step, mixing the data with other resources like Google Maps, news feeds and so on will provide you with the wider context.

3) Generating new Business. Take something like Twitter, where many of the conversations about products will be along the lines of “I want to buy an X, anyone know of a good one?”. Again, monitoring competitor brands and the discussions should yield new opportunities or leads.4) Getting good “Buzz”. In many industries, companies are looking to have “references” and “advocates”. In the Social CRM world, companies must engage with internet users to participate in the conversations, identify “supporters” and solve “problem cases”. They cannot control the conversation so they need to be part of it.5) Sharing knowledge internally. The same tools that give your business insight can mean that your sales force is aware of information they can use to make a deal. The key here is making information flow between functional areas of the business where it might not have done so before.

So where are all these conversations? If you have never considered where they are, open any of these! And why are you not monitoring your competitors and partners as well?

So where are all these conversations? If you have never considered where they are, open any of these!

For small businesses, this could simply mean investing a few hours in creating a Facebook Page for their company. Of course this is a skillset they may not have, but there are enough tutorials and information out there to get started.Secondly, they need a few friends - it may make sense to have a core team of &quot;Likers&quot; - perhaps reliable employees from the company - who &quot;Like&quot; the company as soon as the Page is ready. Creating seed data in this way can often have a ripple effect as others &quot;Like&quot; because they see it on their friends Profile.

Getting information from Real-time conversation engines like Twitter presents its own set of challenges. Firstly, monitoring will have to be on a continuous basis. Perhaps a simple solution is to use the ODED Assistant. All you need to do is define a Field to store the Twitter Username and it does the rest. You can have access to the most recent tweets of a given Username. There are other options of course. The fact that Twitter no longer allows RSS Feed access without OAuth (authentication) makes it harder to do something quickly. There are many examples on the web, and we briefly discussed it in the Siebel Cookbook series on the main On Demand Education Ltd website.

Customers want to be able to network, sharing information and opinions. So you can make it easier for them to do that with your website content and your services. There are a few easy steps to deliver this. Firstly get and implement simple sharing through the freely available tools for Facebook and Twitter. These add buttons to your website with zero code and prettymuch zero effort. Again, added bonus, if you use Facebook then they will appear in your RSS feed (above). It may be easier for you to access Facebook whilst in your CRM On Demand application. There are a large number of tools for exporting Facebook profile URLs to CSV files, and most of them work OK. Then updating your CRM Contacts is a snap, perhaps to include a link to their Profile Page.

Generating business. Using the same technique mentioned above, regularly querying Twitter for new posts containing keywords or phrases. Obviously there is the do-it-yourself approach outlined above, but there are numerous free tools (www.socialoomph.com for example) which can email you when you get a keyword hit).

Getting good buzz. Participating in the conversations can be time consuming, and without careful handling and training this can all go very wrong very quickly. For an SMB, if we are monitoring our Facebook Page fans and adding content on a fairly regular basis, then we should be on top of the &quot;buzz&quot;. If we are involved in live events (such as a yearly exhibition or similar) consider geotargetting your Twitter feed monitoring.

For Facebook you could also opt for the Detail View approach, provided your customer has a Facebook Page. Store the Page Id in a Field and reference it in a dynamic Web Applet. It is not so easy to find good tutorials about this but it is well documented.

On Demand Education Ltd - Socializing CRM On Demand - Small Business

1.
Socializing CRM On Demand<br />Rev 2.2 April 2011<br />

2.
Agenda<br />What is Social CRM On Demand?<br />Opening Premise<br />Where are the communities and where are my customers?<br />Socializing CRM On Demand<br />

3.
What is Social CRM On Demand<br />Social CRM On Demand is CRM On Demand tuned to provide key benefits for small and medium businesses venturing into the Social CRM area for the first time<br />Starting small and simple<br />Generating ideas for the future<br />

4.
Opening Premise<br />Traditional Customer Relationship Management<br />Twenty years ago, businesses knew every client, every contact, their wives, children and pets.<br />Then we spent the next twenty years trying to dehumanize the relationship<br />Reduced physical sales interaction in showrooms and shops<br />increased virtual showrooms like the Internet<br />Distanced support systems from the customer<br />Created self service systems to eliminate interaction<br />This is an extreme example, but it is true to some extent in most industries and companies<br />

5.
Opening Premise<br />Businesses then woke up and realized they needed to analyze, slice and dice all the interactions they had so carefully virtualized and computerized:<br />Customer Trend Analysis<br />Performance Analysis<br />Sales Analysis<br />But at some point, the customer was going to want to talk to a human – so they jumped on Community Boards, Blogs, and now Social Networking<br />

6.
Opening Premise <br />Customer now expects to be able to <br />Communicate with you on the Web using Social Tools<br />This is culturally and generationally variable but is true to an extent and will continue to rise<br />Customer wants to be able to share your content with their community<br />

7.
Opening Premise<br />You expect to generate business from any investment in Social CRM<br />Either directly or indirectly<br />Your marketing efforts must generate “Buzz” and add to the image of your company in a positive way<br />

8.
Online Communities – Where can I find my customers?<br />Online Forums and Communities<br /> Were the original place where people could go to moan, praise or otherwise judge products and services<br />YouTube<br />Started out as a place to watch America’s Funniest Videos, now recognized as a vehicle for consumer concern (try searching for a Supermarket chain) and a place for companies to position themselves in a more freeform environment<br />Savvy CRM users position videos in Channels<br />Twitter<br />The most obvious channel for near real-time communications with peer groups<br />Positive Media Buzz<br />Geographic and time-bound searches available<br />

13.
Social CRM On Demand : Sharing<br />Provide the Basics<br />Make Bookmarking and Tagging easy<br />Encourage users to learn how to use the Favorites & Sticky Notes in CRM On Demand <br />Reward people who link or contact you on your Web site<br />Maintain a list in CRM On Demand of all Web Site Contacts and link them to LinkedIn profiles<br />Reward the regions who generate the most links and the community members who contribute the most<br />Mashup<br />Let CRM On Demand users see their data in new ways<br />Let them search and find unstructured content and link it to CRM On Demand data<br />Let them share this with others (within reason)<br />

24.
Twitter Applet<br />Twitter Applet Uses<br />Short Term Monitoring of event in an specific town or locality<br />Contact Detection and Interested Party / Influencer detection<br />Follow Tweeters directly from Applet<br />Save as Service Requests or Notes or Leads in CRM On Demand<br />

27.
Network Integration<br />Examples of platforms like Ning <br />allows creation of Social Networks and supplies user and management tools<br />Apps can connect to CMS or other sources to integrate them into your Social Network<br />Facebook API and Social Widgets allow a degree of exposure to the Social Network for relatively small effort<br />Enables you to follow what the conversations are about<br />Expect the unexpected<br />

31.
Socialized CRM On Demand<br />With CRM On Demand<br />How will you find conversations?<br />How will you nurture and maintain conversations?<br />Can you make a community based around CRM On Demand?<br />CRM On Demand is a CRM tool<br />Social CRM is not a Tool<br />